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Monday, October 10, 2011

upgrading apps in ubuntu: so easy

in ubuntu, applications whenever installed add their source link to update manager's list of sources. it is then used to notify user whenever an update is available. updates are largely controlled by canonical however, third party apps also publish update notifications which could be checked.

also, all other important security and critical updates are available in update manager. to launch, update manager, either go to system->administration->update manager
or press alt + f2 and type update-manager -d

this will bring up update manager. click on check to check for latest updates in repositories (sources link).

update manager showing available updates

whenever updates are available, you will see all that here and you can choose which ever updates to install. it's not like windows updates as it's not just os related updates. it's also application updates.

for now, i chose all chromium (my browser, parent of google chrome browser) related updates and it'll show me how much data would be downloaded and installed. it does ask for authentication as it's an administrative activity. after that, it'll do everything on its own.

see, it's downloading updates. important: i kept chromium running while this update process was going on, this didn't ask me to close anything. after update, i just had to restart chrome to see if updates were installed. during process, it looked like this.

downloading and installing updates and showing progress

update process was never so easy. i mean, with just one click. i think there's an option to download and install updates automatically. yep, figured it out!

click on settings in left bottom corner, it'll ask for password, provide it. then you'll see something like

see, there's an option to automatically install updates without confirmation. also you can control the frequency at which it checks for available updates. there's are other options too. check out for yourself. play around, it's all easy.